Just A Tad
by jazelock
Summary: Drabble series. Warnings: Shounen-ai, some AU/ARness, general randomness.
1. Tell Me Quietly

Roxas had always confided in Pence. Or his vague blurry memories had told him that anyway. Hayner was his best friend, Olette girl friend, but not girlfriend damn it. But Pence was who he could talk to. Completely hypothetically speaking, he bitched to Hayner about their new math teacher and they plotted devious acts of vengeance together. He asked Olette how to gently let down the girl that had taken to gazing at him with longing, batting, fluttering eyes. He told Pence he thought he was going crazy.

"I see this guy when I sleep. And I know I've never seen him before. I mean, come on. There's no way a guy with hair that color exists, right?"

"What color?"

"Red. Bright red. Like fire truck red red. And he's got these insane neon green eyes. God, this sounds so crazy. And, uh, his hair's all spiked out from his head and he these two dark purple tattoos right here."

Hayner would have teased him about watching too many Saturday morning cartoons. Olette would have told him not to worry about it, it was just a dream.

"So are you going to try and find him?"

"Huh?"

And Pence really meant it. He really believed Roxas and this unknown man were destined to meet.

Now Roxas just wanted to cry as Pence told Sora how this Axel guy had dragged Kairi away. Real Pence couldn't even appreciate the irony of the situation.

Tears rolled down Sora's cheeks. Pence understood for a split second before forgetting just as quickly. And somewhere inside Sora, Roxas was howling.


	2. Because We Can

He wasn't a bad person, really. Dilan definitely wasn't. Xaldin, he later put it delicately, was…misguided, for lack of a better term. As evidence, he pointed out the contrasts between their hair: Dilan's carefully sheared fuzz and Xaldin's wild matted dreadlocks. Deeply involved in the negotiation from one style to the next was his loss of a heart. How could he care about the well-being of others when he could not even muster up the wish to care for his own hygiene? (His desperate fight for survival as the Keyblade drove into him one too many times destroyed the basis of this argument. Xaldin asked calmly that the objector please go fall into a piranha-infested well.)

So he was at first confused when he found Naminé. It wasn't as if he could attribute it to her being the first one he re-met after they all died. He had had to, grudgingly, give that honor to Marluxia. And he certainly hadn't cried upon finding he still-eccentric gardener. May his sentient roses and pitcher plants dehydrate.

But the girl, still wearing a white dress, though perhaps not as skimpy as the one he had known her to wear before, had tackled him today. She looked the same. She sounded the same. "Xaldin."

"Naminé," he acknowledged.

She paused, blond hair glistening with sweat in stick strands. He was vividly aware of the uncomfortable summer day heat pooling liquid where her tiny body pressed against his considerably larger one. Her arms locked tightly around his waist, hands barely able to find each other. He could not see her face without tucking his chin firmly into his throat. "I missed you," she mumbled.

"I find that rather hard to believe."

He didn't know how many other people from their past life she had found. Maybe he was the first, maybe one of the last. But he did know that he was one of the many who had treated her badly, to understate the fact.

"I did. I missed all of you. I wasn't an angel either before," she added. "They called me a witch for a reason."

"It wasn't a particularly justifying reason, as I recall."

Naminé pushed back and met his gaze serenely with those pale blue eyes. "We didn't know any better." And she began sobbing.

He didn't know he had joined her until a hiccup caught in his throat and made his gasp for breath. They sank down in the middle of the sidewalk, still holding on to each other. Let others think what they would. A grown burly man and washed-out girl, crying their hearts out.


	3. Things Change

Vague 358/2 references. Written for 7/8 day.

* * *

There were some things in the worlds that never changed, Axel mused. And then again, there were some things that did.

Take, for example, the fact that he should not have been startled out of whatever organs he had left by Saïx, of all people. Axel snarled and pressed back against the wall. He flattened a hand against the mottled brick and wisps of black began swirling around him.

"Xemnas has not given any orders yet. Axel."

"Doesn't stop you from dragging me back there like the good little lapdog you are, now does it?" He should never have stopped, should have let the darkness swallow him and kept on running. Running, only now he didn't know what he was running for, who he was trying to stay alive for. But Axel wavered, and the darkness held no respect for the weak-willed. In the same moment, the forming dark corridor abruptly vanished and Saïx stabbed the sharp tip of a claymore against his subordinate's throat. Wheels of fire immediately spun into existence in the other man's hands, but sharp pain accompanied by drops of scarlet stopped an attack in its tracks. Axel's arms fell loosely to his sides, chakrams clanging harshly against the wall.

"Why are you running?"

Damn mind reader.

"Your _friend_ is gone. You've delivered Kairi to us. Do you still think you can salvage this mess you've created for yourself?"

Axel muttered indistinctly, wincing as each movement jerked the bladed edge against his skin. Saïx made no move to shift his weapon. "You cannot feel such antagonism for me. Not yet."

"Would you move this thing?" Axel finally managed to snap out.

"There was once no need for us to be in this situation." Saïx did not lower his weapon, but slowly shifted it towards himself slightly. A line of red trailed its path before drawing too thin and breaking into splattered droplets. Axel felt the other man's gaze on the crimson beads more than he felt them fall on his skin. "Yes, well, we seem to have lost our hearts sometime between then and now." There was less bite in the words than he would have liked.

He regretted that as soon as his head slammed against the unrelenting brick. And then his thoughts dissolved in a flash of white into lips, tongue, teeth, blood. It was too fast, too fast, and there was a hand clenched in his hair, scraping his head down the brick. He tasted saliva and metal with teeth tearing at whatever flesh was closest, be it tongue or lip.

Axel moaned and his eyes flew open.

Saïx let him flee, watched darkness envelop red hair and pale skin and tints of blood shining on the other's lips and chin. "Run, Lea." Tasted and held it in his mouth for as long as the flavor would last: blood and soot. "Run very fast."


	4. Upon the Rocks

They had both been young when the worlds were sundered and the Heartless overwhelmed everything.

It was natural for them to have met, Ansem the Wise being such a close friend of the royal family. One was a brilliant apprentice, the other a young prince. Ienzo was smart, he knew it, and he mouthed off to those in authority because of those aspects. Mickey was smart in all the ways Ienzo was not, and he addressed everyone with the respect they deserved with sincerity. Somehow, Ienzo and Mickey hit it off right away. Perhaps the role of a prince was not so far off from that of a scientist's apprentice. They spoke of distant worlds in their leisurely hours and the distant stars, sneaking out at night to lie side by side under the twinkling lights. Ienzo refused to apply any titular courtesies to his friend and Mickey never allowed him to go out of his way to be a brat.

Then the sirens of the dark called to Ienzo and he drifted into a dangerous field. And soon after, the realms needed their wielders.

And much later, Mickey returned to Hollow Bastion. He found his childhood friend and remembered a white lab coat, shrugged casually off the shoulders. This man was no longer a child and was cloaked in a black that made his pale skin glow wraithlike in comparison. "Ienzo."

The disoriented Nobody looked up and shook his head, slate bangs swinging to conceal his expression. "Zexion now, my friend."

They had both been young when the Keyblade chose one and the other fell into darkness.


	5. Monsters

AkuRoku Day 2009. I'm out of practice with nonAU AkuRoku. Plus I'm at summer camp; sue me, it's short. But happy 8/13!

* * *

They had no hearts. Regardless, with a few of the Organization's members, they had their personal refuges when their nonexistent feelings began playing havoc upon the heartless shells they were. Axel had no such physical location; he sat silently (for once) and let his eyes reflect yellows and reds from the flames surrounding him, fire licking at his coat and heat fanning his air restlessly. Demyx ran to his sitar and a beach, and lost himself in the music interweaving with the sound of the waves. No one knew what Zexion felt but everyone agreed without discussion that the library was a dangerous place to attempt entry when Zexion shut the door behind him.

Roxas ran to Axel. And Axel would not even turn to look at him, but continue with whatever he happened to be doing at the time: cursing over delayed mission reports, throwing fireballs at makeshift targets. Roxas would stand in the doorway and watch, and eventually, five minutes, two hours later, Axel would crook a finger, and Roxas would softly make his way over and drop cross-legged to the floor. Their routine rarely varied.

Axel would start talking, words not really designed for response, and Roxas closed his eyes and let the absent words wash over him.

"Did Xemnas piledrive you with that no-hearts crap again?"

"Luxord got together another game last night."

"Sea salt ice cream sound good?"

At that point, he would stand and disappear into swirling darkness. Roxas would see the bright blue emerge first a few minutes later. He would drag his tongue across the salty sweetness and feel Axel's acidic eyes fixed on him. He would taste the same flavor on Axel's lips as their fingers twined together through sticky black leather.

"Come on."

In Halloween Town, Axel almost glided, glowing and skeletally thin, and Roxas sliced his tongue on his teeth and wondered how long before they swiftly made their way to an abandoned location and experimented again with their new bodily additions. No one noticed them; no one cared. Strange creatures floated in and out of the town on a regular basis. And cruel as it seemed, Axel would wrap a raggedly clad arm around Roxas from behind and whisper, "You want to see real monsters? There they are. _We're_ fine." And Roxas would shudder guiltily and a curve would find his mouth and something in his chest lift. Then they were running through dead leaves and snapping twigs and tumbling out into the wet snow, Axel full out cackling and Roxas well on his way there.

The sun would be forever set in that world and they would travel backwards in daylight to watch the eternal twilight, feeling the tick of the clock hands below their feet. The residents of Twilight Town moved beneath them like miniscule heartless scurrying for their dark lives. And Roxas looked from the corners of his eyes at Axel innocently licking at his third ice cream of the day, looking nothing like the psychology mastermind Roxas knew he was.

His voice was rough with disuse. "I know what you're trying to do."

"Do tell." Axel turned glinting mischievous eyes at him.

Roxas shook his head, a faint grin materializing on his face.

They had had no hearts.

He saw bright blue sparks against Sora's eyelids when Axel screamed.


End file.
